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Local search benchmarks for roofers

Local SEO for roofers

We measured every roofing contractor listing that ranks on Google Maps in 40 US cities. 794 listings. The typical one carries 53 reviews and a 4.9 rating.

The bar for roofers

Updated September 2026 · next update December

In plain terms: a mid-pack ranking listing has around 53 reviews and a 4.9 rating. The middle half of everything that ranks sits between 17 and 123 reviews, which is a very wide spread.

Reviews to be typical
53
Half the ranking listings have more than this. Half have fewer.
Rating to be typical
4.9
84% of ranking listings sit at 4.8 or better. 95% are at 4.5 or better.
The middle half
17 to 123
A quarter of listings rank on under 17 reviews. A quarter carry over 123.
The low end of a top three
5
One in ten listings holding a top-three spot has fewer reviews than this.

Method. Google Maps results for “roofing contractor in {city}” across the 40 largest US cities, collected 1 September 2026, signed out, twenty results deep per city. 800 listings returned. 6 were removed because Google classifies them as something other than a roofing contractor, leaving 794. Of those, 784 display a review count. Sponsored listings are stored and counted but never averaged into these figures. Ratings and review counts are Google’s own displayed values. Rankings vary with the searcher’s exact position, so treat city-level figures as a benchmark rather than a forecast. Full methodology. Re-measured quarterly, and this block stops rendering if a reading goes more than 180 days stale.

Finding four

The ads are rarer than the advice suggests

You will read that sponsored listings sit above every local pack and swallow the clicks. We looked for them in all 40 cities. We found 2 sponsored roofing contractor listings, in 1 city. The other 39 returned none at the moment we measured.

Two honest caveats. Maps ads are an auction and they turn over through the day, so one snapshot per city tells you where ads were running that morning and not much about the rest of the week. And a small paid presence is not the same as a small paid opportunity. A thin auction is usually an argument for testing it rather than avoiding it.

Finding five

Your primary category is effectively one choice

100% of ranking listings use the primary category Roofing contractor. Nothing else comes close. If you are on Roofing contractor, the burden of proof for switching is high.

Google categoryListings in our sampleShare
Roofing contractor 794 100.0%

Category names are Google’s own strings, and counts are listings observed across 40 cities. A further 6 listings ranked for this query under unrelated categories. They are excluded from every figure on this page, but they are real competitors for the click.

The rows behind the numbers

Top three in 6 cities

Straight from the collection, three large metros and three mid-sized. Each name links to its Google listing so you can check any row yourself.

ListingCityRankRatingReviews
Colony Roofers Atlanta 1 4.9 412
Atlanta City Roofing Atlanta 2 5.0 4
Florentino & Sons Roofing & Remodeling Atlanta 3 4.9 67
Austin Roofing Company & Handyman Austin 1 4.9 48
Austin Roofing Company Austin 2 5.0 57
Lapeyre Roofing Austin 3 5.0 389
Joseph Roofing Company Baltimore 1 4.9 7
Kelbie Home Improvement Inc - Baltimore Flat Roof Services Baltimore 2 5.0 234
CRG Roofing and Siding Baltimore 3 4.9 562
Green Mountain Contractors, Inc. Albuquerque 1 4.9 74
RMC Roofing & Construction Albuquerque 2 4.9 79
Ridgeview Roofing & Restoration Albuquerque 3 5.0 282
Fonseca & Sons Roofing Columbus 1 4.8 94
Acme Roofing and Siding Columbus 2 4.9 149
Professional Roofing Contractors LLC Columbus 3 4.9 105
New View Roofing Fresno 1 4.9 81
AAA Roofing Fresno 2 4.3 29
Roofs 4 Less Fresno 3 5.0 37
Where to go next

The work that moves these numbers

Each of these is a separate discipline with its own measurement. Start with whichever gap is widest for you.

Local SEO for roofers

Proximity, categories and the profile fields that decide whether you appear at all. The 53-review median is the target this work is measured against.

GBP management for roofers

The profile itself: hours, attributes, services, photos and the edits that quietly get reverted.

Reputation management for roofers

Rating is a conversion lever here, not a ranking gate. 84% of ranking listings already sit at 4.8 or better.

Review management for roofers

Getting from where you are to 53 reviews, with a monthly target per location and a realistic timeline.

Listing management for roofers

Name, address and hours consistent everywhere they are published, so nothing contradicts your profile.

Google Maps management for roofers

Rankings measured on a grid around each location, so you can see the radius you actually own.

What Locus does

The work that moves these numbers

What we actually run against the benchmarks above, rather than a generic local checklist.

WorkWhy it matters when the median is 53 reviews
Review velocity per locationClosing a gap from 17 reviews to the 53 median is a volume problem with a timeline attached. We set a monthly target per location from its own gap and track against it, not against a group average that hides your weakest site.
Rating as a conversion metricRating tracked against calls and direction requests rather than reported as a ranking risk.
Category and attribute governancePrimary category, hours, attributes, services and the booking link. These are the fields customers filter on, and the ones that drift when staff edit profiles or Google accepts a third-party correction.
Proximity grid trackingRankings measured on a grid around each location. In a category where a quarter of mid-sized-city listings rank on 19 reviews or fewer, proximity is doing more of the work than volume, and a city-level number hides that entirely.
Duplicate and suspension watchDuplicate profiles split your reviews between two half-dead listings. Suspensions in regulated categories are slow to reverse. Both are cheaper to prevent than to fix, and both are invisible until someone is watching for them.
Benchmarks refreshed quarterlyEvery figure on this page is re-measured across 40 cities each quarter. Your targets move when the market moves, rather than when someone remembers to update a slide.
Getting there

The first ninety days

1. Measure the gap per location

Review count against 53, for each location separately. Group averages hide the one site dragging the network down, and in a multi-site group the spread between your best and worst location is usually wider than the spread between cities.

2. Fix the profile fields

Category, hours, attributes, booking link. This is the cheapest work and the only part that moves in days rather than months. 90% of ranking listings are claimed, so an unclaimed profile is a genuine outlier.

3. Start review velocity, honestly

A location 36 reviews below the median needs roughly six to nine months at a realistic request rate. Anyone quoting six weeks is either buying reviews or measuring something else, and bought reviews are a suspension risk.

4. Baseline on a grid before you change anything

City-level rank is too coarse to attribute results to. Set the grid baseline first or you will not know what worked, and you will spend the next quarter arguing about it.

Questions

Common questions

How many Google reviews do roofers need to rank?

The median ranking listing across 40 US cities carries 53, with the middle half between 17 and 123. That spread is the real answer: there is no single threshold. A quarter of everything that ranks does so on under 17 reviews.

Can we rank on very few reviews?

In a smaller city, often yes. One in ten listings holding a top-three spot in a mid-sized city has 10 reviews or fewer. In a large metro that figure is 5. The mechanism is proximity rather than volume, and grid tracking will tell you which radius you already own.

Which primary category should we use?

794 of 794 ranking listings use Roofing contractor. It is the default and switching away from it needs a real reason rather than a hunch about intent.

How long does local SEO take?

Profile and category work shows within days to a few weeks. Review volume is the slow part and it sets your ceiling. Faster quotes usually mean bought reviews, which is a suspension risk, or a different metric being reported.

How often are these numbers updated?

Quarterly, across the same 40 cities, with the same query and the same depth. This block stops rendering if a reading goes more than 180 days stale, so a number here is never older than two quarters. Where a figure changed from a previous version it changed because the measurement changed, and we say so.

Related

See where you sit

The free audit reads your live Google profile and puts your review count and rating against the 40-city benchmark for your category.